Slides that accompanied my presentation to the "Linked Ancient World Data Institute".

1. Beyond HREF
<a rel="dcterms:creator" href="http://viaf.org/viaf/220831018">Sebastian Heath</a>
Slides shown alongside my presentation to the NEH-
Funded “Linked Ancient World Data Institute”.
Except for the screen captures, quotes and anything else not original, the
content here is ©2012 The Author, released under a CC0 license.

2. Finally, we stress that it is not our intent to ask LAWDI
participants to adhere to a single standard that dictates how
each project and discipline brings its intellectual content into
digital form. We recognize that existing data is heterogeneous
and that many digital humanities projects have invested
substantial time and money in creating resources according to
their own needs. In this environment, any attempt to create a
single unifying standard of data representation will fail and so
we have not adopted that language in this proposal. We are also
sensitive to the principle that overly detailed standards presume
that a discipline knows all that it wants to say about its topic of
study. This is certainly not the case for the Ancient World,
where the basic terms of analysis continue to change in
exciting ways. Of course, recognizing complexity as the
starting point of discussions does not mean that useful
interoperability cannot be achieved.
From the proposal submitted to the @NEH_ODH

3. Linked Data is about using the Web to connect related data
that wasn't previously linked, or using the Web to lower the
barriers to linking data currently linked using other
methods. More specifically, Wikipedia defines Linked Data
as "a term used to describe a recommended best practice
for exposing, sharing, and connecting pieces of data,
information, and knowledge on the Semantic Web using
URIs and RDF."

4. linking data

5. Text
Click on the screen capture. Then, hover over
“Mozia” in the sentence beginning “See linked
data...” for an example of turning links to stable
entities into a user experience.

6. Nomisma.org is “Under Construction” but does show
further examples of using the Internet to gather a
distributed definition of a concept such as a hoard of
Greek coins. But again, stability of web addresses is key.

7. Linked Data is about using the Web to connect related data
that wasn't previously linked, or using the Web to lower the
barriers to linking data currently linked using other
methods. More specifically, Wikipedia defines Linked Data
as "a term used to describe a recommended best practice
for exposing, sharing, and connecting pieces of data,
information, and knowledge on the Semantic Web using
URIs and RDF."

8. If you go to that page, there’s a link to “RDFa Triples
(Turtle)”. We care not just about stable URIs, but also
about having automatically parsable content accessible at
those stable URIs.

9. “The assertion of an RDF triple says that some relationship, indicated by the
predicate, holds between the things denoted by subject and object of the triple.”
<http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf11-concepts/>
Predicate Object
Subject
nm:rrc-525.4a nm:denomination “Denarius”
NOTE:You *REALLY* want URIs in all three positions if good ones exist.
nm:rrc-525.4a nm:denomination nm:denarius
“nm:” = “http://nomisma.org/id/”

10. “Now many people will tell you (indeed I
probably will too) that you need to distinguish
the statements you make about the thing in the
real world from the statements about the
document. For example, a URI for me might
return a document with some information about
me, but the creation date for that document and
the creation date for me are two different
things. And because you donʼt want to get
confused itʼs better to have a URI for the thing
and another one for the document making
assertions about the thing. Make sense?”
<http://derivadow.com/2010/07/01/linked-things/>

11. Text
http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n79033006 is the
URI - aka identifier - for the the subject “Augustus”.
Go to that link and you’ll see “.html” appended in the
address bar. That’s an example of redirecting from an
abstract identifier to an actual document on the
Internet with content about the identified concept.

12. The issue of “identifiers” and “content about what
those identifiers identify” falls under the rubric of
“HTPP Issue 57” (originally issue 14). Note that it is
“OPEN” and there is room for those of us in the
Digital Humanities community to speak our minds.
Particularly, is the current language around Issue #57
useful for/enabling of what we are trying to do? I
suspect many will find that it just isn’t.

13. “Information is always a
measure of the decrease of
uncertainty at a receiver.”
http://www.lecb.ncifcrf.gov/~toms/information.is.not.uncertainty.html
I quote this as a useful principle that can get a
conversation started. I strive to put information on
the Internet in such a way that upon transmission,
both soft-tissue processors - “Brains” - and silicon/
other agents can make use of it.